President Thabo Mbeki to depart for G-8 Meetings

Pretoria – South African President Thabo Mbeki will today Saturday 5 July 2008 depart for Hokkaido, Japan where he will participate in the Africa Outreach session, G-5 Leaders meeting and extended outreach sessions of the G-8 Summit scheduled from Monday – Wednesday 7-9 July 2008.

President Mbeki, supported by Minister Martinus van Schalkwyk, will participate in these meetings of the G-8 within the context of South Africa’s priority to consolidate North-South relations with a view to fastracking the developmental agenda of the South.  Accordingly, President Mbeki will be joined by his counterparts from India, Brazil, Mexico, China, Australia, Indonesia and South Korea during these meetings.

President Thabo Mbeki, will further, during these engagements encourage the implementation of past G-8 commitments to Africa whilst encouraging adequate and effective responses to address the challenges of food and energy security in Africa and renewed commitment to the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.

The Summit, following the recently concluded African Union Summit and 4th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (IV), will have to affirm that the Africa Action Plan, agreed to at the 2002 Kananaskis G-8 Summit, be the basic and common framework for engagement between the G-8 and Africa.  The G-8 will be encouraged to fully implement the Africa Action Plan as well as to revitalise the implementation mechanism of the Africa Action Plan.

President Mbeki on conclusion of the African Union Summit earlier in the week said, “Some of the principle decisions that were taken by NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee were that we need to get the G-8 to reaffirm the Africa Action Programme.  That is the programme that had we agreed with the G-8 when we met them in Canada in 2002.  We must say we must confirm this as the programme agreed to between the G-8 and Africa.”

“We want to say, here is a basic programme and any follow up must be about the whole Africa Action Programme and we also want to ensure that we have an implementation mechanism between the G-8 and Africa – a joint mechanism so that we can follow up on the implementation of the G-8 of the Africa Action Plan.”

Issued by Ronnie Mamoepa on 082 990 4853

Department of Foreign Affairs
Private Bag X152
Pretoria
0001

5 July 2008